Sanjay Leela Bhansali Quotes

When I am rehearsing for a play, I try to read nothing that might distract my concentration from the work in progress.

Working with Michael Chiklis is a lesson in professionalism and staying focused. That's what Chiklis brings all day long.

I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.

Debra Winger doesn't let anything interfere with her performance, which is the way it should be.

A lot of actors talk about doing their homework, but very few of them do it.

British actors are pretty good, by and large, at turning on at 'action' and off at 'cut.'

My tendency is to be quiet and to stay focused and in character. Not the entire time, but certainly to stay focused while I'm on set.

The hardest part of my job, daily, is to not laugh while we shoot.

When you're acting, it should be the most important thing that's going on. But when you're not, leave it alone.

To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.

I don't need any crutches in order to concentrate. As a child I learned that you must be ready because I'd be yelled at more than other people and it would always be my fault. I learned that to be professional is your number-one priority. The art comes second. You learn that, in order to give your best performance, you have to be a good technician, which means never allowing negative influences affect your performance.

The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, "I'm an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job." There's no "I'm just waiting for the inspiration." They just do their jobs. They say, "Let's go over the scene a few times and get it."

She [Susan Lucci] was extraordinary. She wouldn't look at the scene until you walked in to rehearse it. It was amazing to me. That's the impression I got anyway.

When I started acting, I had a really strong discipline of knowing that you had to be on time, knowing that you had to work 12 to 16 hours a day, knowing you had to be prepared, knowing you had to be ready, and it's very interesting because if you're an artist and you're creating, you can work very, very long hours but as you're putting out that love of creation, it's almost like you're charged by it, you're charged by the process of it.

I've just learned that you can't take this game for granted. You have to stay professional and stay focused and stay prepared to produce and continue to work hard. Nothing's given.

When I train, I train well.

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.

Film acting would be about 80 percent better than it has been lately if actors did their homework, if they didn't have egos that took the size of their talent for granted.

I often ask students: 'Is this what you would show Tom Ford?' and they say: 'No, we'd have done more work' or 'We'd have dressed better.' So I say: 'Why don't you do that here?'

You know the rules. No jazz before a rumble.

The actual fights themselves are very demanding. You don't want to drain yourself. But it pumps you up, gets you in the zone. It's a good way of getting you into the zone for the scene.

I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour before my time.

To me, it's my job not to laugh, no matter what's said. By the time we shoot, I'm ready for all that's coming. I probably do most of my breaking in rehearsals, when I know that I can.

If this company is about anything, it's about discipline and staying focused.

It's cool. You can laugh about it, but at the same time you can't really get caught up in it because you're here for a job and it's to win football games. Being on this team, being with the head coach here and the quarterback we have keeps you humble. It keeps you hard working. You can laugh and giggle about stuff, but then at the same time you've got to make sure you're prepared and practicing hard still.